Chapter 34
GRIFFIN
I’m standing in my office, changing out of my business outfit and into clothes that make me feel more like myself.
The jacket goes over the back of my chair. The dress shirt comes off next, then the cufflinks, dropped into the shallow tray on my desk beside my watch. I roll my sleeves to my forearms, then pull on the heavy canvas overshirt I keep in my office for site visits.
I tug on my steel toe boots, dust still caught in the seams from the last site I walked through. Most people in this office know me as the man behind the desk, who approves drawings and decides which projects are worth the firm’s time.
But site visits are the part of the work I love the most.
I grab my hard hat from the shelf, along with the rolled set of plans I marked up, then check my phone on the way out of my office.
No new message from Tiana or @tianawithlove.
Then I check again before locking the screen, because I have no dignity.
The hallway is already busy despite it being early in the morning. Someone calls my name from the design bullpen, and I lift two fingers in acknowledgment without stopping.
I’m halfway toward the elevators when I glance down at the plans in my hand, mentally running through the structural issue waiting for me on-site. If the framing crew ignored the updated notes again, I am going to lose what little patience I have left.
I turn the corner near the conference rooms and nearly run straight into Mya.
Immediately, I know I am not going to like whatever is coming.
“No,” I say.
Mya’s brows lift. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“You busy?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful. I’ll be quick.”
She walks with me.
“That’s never been true once in your life.”
“Rude.” Mya speeds up her pace to keep up with me.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “What do you want, Mya?”
For once, she doesn’t answer immediately, and that is the first sign something is wrong.
Mya and silence do not usually occupy the same room unless Worth is involved, and even then, the silence is less peaceful and more sexually charged in a way I actively try not to acknowledge.
Her grin fades.
I lower my hand from my face. “What?”
“Did you talk to Tiana today?”
“No.” It comes out too fast.
Mya studies me for a long second as we reach the elevators. Then she exhales and shakes her head. “God, you are such a man.”
“I’m not in the mood for whatever that means. Just tell me what happened.”
The teasing falls away completely this time.
She grips her coffee with both hands. “Tiana called me crying.”
The words land like a fist in my gut. “Is she okay?”
Mya looks down into her cup. “Mr. Patel sold Willow’s.”
“No way.” I stare at her. “But she still had time. She was so close to her goal. He made an agreement with her.”
“Not a signed one.”
I scoff and Mya holds up one hand. “I’m not defending it. I’m just telling you what she told me.”
I drag a hand over my mouth and look down at the floor.
“Aldercrest made him an offer,” she continues. “A huge one. Way more than Tiana could match. Way more than the café is probably worth on paper.”
“Of course they did,” I mutter.
David—the founder and CEO—is a shark.
I’ve dealt with him multiple times through W.H.M., so I know that he buys properties so he can rebuild, rebrand, and sell back to the same neighborhood at triple the price.
Aldercrest loves places like Willow's: small, beloved, and under-protected.
“They want the whole block, from what Tiana understood. Willow’s was the last holdout.”
I turn away from her and press both hands to the back of my neck.
“Mr. Patel told her it wasn’t an easy decision. He and his wife went back and forth for days, but the offer sets them up for the rest of their lives. Retirement. Medical stuff. Their kids. Everything.”
I let out an exhale. I can understand why he took the offer and still hate that Tiana became the collateral damage.
“How did she take it?” I ask, even though I already know.
“She’s devastated. She worked so hard,” Mya says. “She had spreadsheets, Griffin. She had ideas for the menu, community nights, student discounts, renovations. She was close enough that she let herself believe it might happen.”
I rub my thumb along my jaw, pressure building behind my sternum.
I know all of this because Tiana told me pieces of it in real life, when she still trusted me with the shape of her future.
And more recently, she told him. @built2last.
I want to be mad at her for not telling me today, which is so absurdly unfair it almost makes me laugh. Tiana didn’t tell me because I made myself the man she has to survive being around, not the one she can fall apart beside.
I promised her I would be there, no matter what. But apparently my promises come with expiration dates and run out the second I get scared and decide distance is easier than honesty.
The thought curdles in my stomach.
“What does Aldercrest plan to do with it? I thought they were going to keep the café as is.”
Mya’s eyes narrow. “Don’t make that face.”
I look at her. “What face?”
“The billionaire-man face. The same one Worth gets before he buys something just to prove a point. He has the same rich-man-fix-it syndrome.”
I say nothing.
“Oh my God. You are literally thinking about buying Willow’s.”
“I’m thinking about options.”
“You’re thinking about using enough money to make the problem go away.”
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”
“Yes.” Mya points at me. “Because Tiana is already heartbroken, and if you sweep in and fix it behind her back, she will not see it as a nice gesture. I only told you because I thought you should know.”
“Why?”
“Because even though you’re acting like an emotionally constipated gargoyle, I know you care about her.”
I do. Painfully so.
Tiana’s dream is gone, and I’m finding out from someone else because I taught her not to come to me.
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
“Where is she now?”
Mya watches me carefully. “Griffin. Do not try to fix her like she’s a project.”
“I’m not.”
“And don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Mya’s voice softens. “Tiana doesn’t need you to be powerful right now. She needs you to be a safe space.”
Then she leaves me standing there, the full weight of everything I have broken pressing down on my chest.
For a long moment, I don’t move. When the elevator finally shows up, I step inside, reaching for my phone.
There is a new message from her.
@tianawithlove
ignore me if this is too depressing but have you ever worked really hard for something and still lost it because someone else just had more?
The house is quiet when I step inside.
I close the door behind me, shrug out of my coat, and pause in the entryway.
“Tiana?”
No answer.
My chest tightens before logic can intervene.
She might be upstairs. She might have already left to get Sylas. She might be avoiding me, which would be reasonable, considering I have turned avoidance into a personality trait.
Still, something about the silence drags a hook beneath my ribs.
I move through the hall and into the kitchen.
Empty.
There is a mug in the sink, half-rinsed, with a smear of lipstick on the rim. Tiana’s lipstick. The sight of it does something painful to me, which is absurd—it’s just a mug.
On the island, Tiana’s keys are gone. But her cardigan hangs over the back of one of the stools.
Lila used to do that.
For years, remembering things like that hurt.
Now, standing in my kitchen with Tiana’s cardigan in the place where Lila used to leave traces of herself, the feeling that moves through me isn’t all grief.
This house has held love before, and somehow, against every belief I had about my own life, it’s slowly making room to hold it again.
As I stare at the cardigan for too long, my phone buzzes. I pull it from my pocket.
@tianawithlove
sorry. ignore that. dramatic moment has passed. I am once again a normal and well-adjusted woman who definitely didn’t cry in a grocery store parking lot.
My hand tightens around the phone.
Tiana is somewhere out there, crying alone in her car—or trying not to.
A second message appears.
@tianawithlove
anyway. how’s your day, stranger?
The front door opens before I can respond.
Tiana steps inside, one hand holding a paper grocery bag against her hip and the other wrapped around her keys. For half a second, she doesn’t see me. Her head is bowed, hair loose around her face, shoulders set in that too-straight way I recognize now as the beginning of collapse.
Then she looks up and goes still.
Her eyes flick over me, taking in the jacket, the keys still in my hand, the fact that I am home hours before I should be.
“You’re home early,” she says.
“I am.”
She steps farther inside and closes the door with her foot. “Everything okay?”
The question is polite.
A nanny asking her employer if there has been a schedule change.
Not Tiana asking Griffin something. And it makes me want to put my fist through a wall.
I deserve it, though.
“I heard about Willow’s.”
Tiana’s face goes blank.
For one breath, she doesn’t move. Then she adjusts the grocery bag on her hip. “Mya has a big mouth.”
“She was worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
The lie is automatic. So practiced it sounds almost believable.
I follow her into the kitchen, careful to keep enough distance that she doesn’t feel cornered, though every part of me wants to cross the room and take the bag from her hands, take the weight, take all of it.
Tiana sets the bag on the island and begins pulling things out. She places each item on the counter like she is conducting inventory at gunpoint.
“Tiana.”
“I said I’m fine, Griffin.”
“I know what you said.”
She laughs without looking at me. “Then why are we still talking about it?”
Because you called Mya crying and texted a stranger from a parking lot while crying. And I made myself the last person you would come to, and I don’t know how to forgive myself for that.
Instead of saying any of that, I lean one hip against the far counter and keep my voice quiet. “Because you don’t have to be fine with me.”